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A.Amin javaheri. writing
Writing History Advances in language learning over the past decades have led to significant changes in how writing is viewed. These are 3 approaches to learning and teaching writing : Writing within an environmentalist approach: Up to the end of the 1960s, writing was neglected in the language learning field . which were rooted in structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology, identified language with speech and described the language learning process as a mechanical process based on a stimulus-response-reinforcement chain. It was believed that mastery of spoken language and its orthographic conventions had to precede the learning of written language because discrepancy between speech sounds and orthography could cause interferences with the proper learning of speech. Writing within an innatist approach: By the late 1960s attention began to shift away from attention to form toward the actual process of composition, This significant change, however, was prompted by the development of Chomsky’s (1957, 1965) innatist theory which showed that children are active rather than passive in the language learning process since they infer rules to test how language works, writers’ mental processes during the composing act began to gain importance. Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer (1963) were the first researchers to question the effectiveness of grammar instruction to improve learners’ writing and they made a call for teachers to investigate how writing was actually produced. From this research, cognitive models of writing emerged. The most influential theory was set forth by Flower and Hayes (1981), who proposed a cognitive model of recursive writing consisting of three major elements: 1) the planning stage, ''in turn subdivided into smaller processes such as generating ideas, organizing these ideas and setting the goals for writing; 2) the ''translating stage, ''in which writers articulate and write down their thoughts generated in the first stage; and 3) the ''reviewing stage, ''in which writers evaluate and revise the text. Writing within an interactionist approach: By the late 1970s beginning of the early 1980s, attention shifted toward the sociocultural context of the writing act under the influence of the interactionist approach to language learning. In linguistics, discourse analysis can be associated with the school of linguistic analyses such as formal linguistics (text linguistics) or systemic linguistics (genre analyses). three main patterns of textual organization: 1) the ''problem-solution pattern, in which a problem is presented in a given situation followed by the response to the problem and the evaluation of the response as a solution to the problem; 2) the hypothetical-real ''pattern, which is characterized by, first, the presentation of a statement which is to be supported or rejected, and then the affirmation or denial of that statement, and 3) the ''general-particular ''pattern, in which a generalization is presented followed by an exemplification of that generalization. On the other hand, within systemic linguistics, Halliday (1978) developed a systematic way of describing language in terms of its functions within social contexts. Basic to his theory was the notion of ''register, ''which is a functional language variation and is analyzed on the basis of three variables: ''field, ''or the social function; ''tenor, ''or the role of the participants; and ''mode, ''or what the language is doing. Characteristics of writen language 1. permanenc: once something is written down and delivered in its final form to its intended audience ,the writer abdicates a certain power : the power to emend , to clarify . to withdraw. 2. production time: the good news is that , given appropriate stretches of time , a writer can indeed become a good writer by developing efficient processes for achieving the final product. The bad news is that many educational contexts demand student writing within time limits , or writing for display as noted in the previous section. 3. distance: one of the thorniest problems writers face is anticipating their audience . that anticipation ranges from general audience characteristics to how specific words, phrase, sentences, and paragraph will be interpreted. 4.orthography: everything from simple greeting to extremely complex ideas is captured through the manipulation of a few dozen letters and other written symbols. 5. complexity: writers must learn how to remove redundancy , how to combine sentences, how to make references to other element in a text and much more. 6.vocabulary: good writers will learn to take advantages of the richness of vocabulary. Types of classroom writing While various genre of written text , its include five major categories : 1. Imitative or writing down 2. Intensive or controlled 3. Self –writing 4. Display writing 5. Real writing '''Teaching writing within a communicative competence framework' 1. Discourse competence. ''' Discourse competence enables writers to use discourse features to achieve a well-formed written text given a communicative goal and context in which it has to be written These discourse features involve cohesion (e.g., reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical chains), coherence as well as formal schemata or knowledge of the structure of written genres . '''2. Linguistic competence Linguistic competence comprises basic elements of written communication such as vocabulary or lexicon, grammar rules, and conventions in mechanics. Regarding lexical resources, writers need to know basic word meanings and how these meanings, for example, may differ depending on context In order to use words, writers also need to become familiar with knowledge of the grammatical system. Thus, writers need to pay attention to form in order to learn the grammar rules underlying the syntactic relations as well as the structure of clauses. Additionally, writers’ knowledge of the mechanics is essential in writing since faulty punctuation or spelling mistakes may result in an illegible written text. 3. Pragmatic competence ''' written clues to meaning include: text layout and graphic devices (such as punctuation and italics, among many other means), syntactic devices (cleft constructions), and linguistic devices (such as the choice of verbs or adverbs), as well as awareness of the physical location in which the text is to appear or appears An important point to remember here is that a written text also provides important clues to meaning and that mastery of how these clues is essential for writers if their ultimate goal is to make readers achieve a full understanding of a given written text. '''4. Intercultural competence Intercultural competence deals with the knowledge of how to produce written texts within a particular sociocultural context. In order to produce a competently written discourse within a particular culture, writers need tounderstand and adhere to the rules and norms of behavior that exist in a target language community, as well as to develop cross-cultural awareness. 5. Strategic competence writers need to possess a set of learning strategies to write effectively. the relevance of encouraging learners to develop the strategy of revising their drafts based on their own opinion or suggestions from peers and/or teacher writers also need to possess communication strategies to overcome limitations in the language area, such as paraphrasing, restructuring or literal translation from the first language.